Roots reggae, with a California touch

Santa Barbara's Rebelution comes to Portsmouth with a new album full of songs

Eric Rachmany brings the reggae band Rebelution to Portsmouth on Saturday. (Courtesy of Rebelution )

June 19, 2014|By Mike Holtzclaw, mholtzclaw@dailypress.com

The way Eric Rachmany sees it, reggae music was meant to be played live, and preferably outdoors.

Rachmany, guitarist and lead vocalist for Rebelution, will be in his element when his band plays the nTelos Wireless Pavilion amphitheater in Portsmouth's Harbor Center Saturday night.

"The word is clarity," Rachmany said, talking by phone from New York City just a few hours before the release party for the band's new album. "There's lots of space in reggae. You can hear every instrument, and every instrument has its part. You turn it up real loud, and you can hear that clarity even more.

"And there's lots of space at an amphitheater. People can dance. The bass lines are such a huge part. You can just feel the music vibrating through your body. It's very memorable."

Rebelution tends to inspire that kind of reaction regardless of the venue. After a show at Dallas' Palladium Ballroom last year, a reviewer at Jam Magazine noted that "there wasn't a stationary body in the building."

Rebelution was formed about a decade ago in Santa Barbara, and there is still a breezy California touch to the band's Jamaican rhythms. From the start, it has been a do-it-yourself outfit – not only producing their own records, but even constructing their own stages before their early shows.

The new CD, "Count Me In," is Rebelution's fourth album. Two previous releases – 2009's "Bright Side of Life" and 2012's "Peace of Mind" – hit No. 1 on Billboard's reggae album chart. Relix Magazine praised the record for "a sunsplashy sound that owes a lot to the pop-reggae efforts of Black Uhuru and Third World."

The comparison is not coincidental. Rachmany said he grew up listening to a lot of different types of music in Southern California, but the only reggae he heard was Bob Marley's ubiquitous songbook. It wasn't until his late teens, when he heard Don Carlos and Black Uhuru, that reggae became something urgent to him.

"It was hearing Don Carlos that really influenced me to start a band," Rachmany said. "When we started out, that's what we would do – cover reggae songs."

Now Rebelution has been successful enough that Don Carlos provides guest vocals on "Roots Reggae Music," one of the instant standout tracks on the new disc.

"It was amazing to me to be playing with him," Rachmany said. "I still get pretty anxious whenever he's around, just because of the influence he had on me. But he's such a humble guy. It would have been a bummer situation if I met him and if he wasn't the nicest of people. But he's really one of the coolest."